Cohen expected to claim lying, racism and cheating by Trump

By Mary Clare Jalonick and Michael R. Sisak

Published
2:23 pm PST, Tuesday, February 26, 2019

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, is expected to give a behind-the-scenes account of what he will claim is Trump’s lying, racism and cheating, and possibly even criminal conduct, when he testifies publicly before a House committee on Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

Cohen is expected to provide what he will claim is evidence, in the form of documents, of Trump’s conduct, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss the confidential testimony.

Trump’s former personal “fixer” arrived on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to begin three days of congressional appearances, starting with a closed-door interview with the Senate intelligence committee. The public won’t have a chance to hear from him until Wednesday, when he testifies before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He will go behind closed doors again when he talks to the House intelligence committee on Thursday.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Tuesday it was “laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.”

Lawmakers are alternately suspicious of Cohen — who is set to serve prison time for lying to the House and Senate intelligence committees in 2017 — and eager to hear what he has to say after he turned on his longtime boss. Senators on the intelligence panel are attending Tuesday’s meeting, a departure from the committee’s usual practice, where witness interviews are conducted by staff only.

The Senate intelligence committee chairman, Richard Burr, said no topics will be off limits and Cohen, a close confidant of Trump for many years, “should expect to get any question from anywhere about anything.”

Burr said committee members know a lot more than they did when they first interviewed Cohen, who later pleaded guilty to lying to the committees about abandoning a proposal for a Trump Tower in Moscow in January 2016. Cohen has since acknowledged he continued pursuing the project for months after that.

Burr suggested his committee will take steps to ensure Cohen is telling the truth.

“I’m sure there will be some questions we know the answers to, so we’ll test him to see whether in fact he’ll be truthful this time,” Burr said.